Advantages

Disadvantages

Carcass' second album (1989).

'Symphonies of Sickness' does everything that a second album should, building on the success of Carcass' first and also radically improving it. Bringing more death metal influence to the surgical table this time round with a more concentrated performance from all musicians, the focus is no longer merely on extreme speed, as songs take time out for speed changes and structural progression to keep things interesting, like the excellent solo section of 'Exhume to Consume' that proves why their later acclaimed work 'Heartwork' wasn't quite as ahead of its time as people claim.

This was only released a year after the debut album, but the changes are immediately evident even from looking at the tracklist, which contains half as many songs for the simple reason that they're all twice as long as they used to be, the time being used to make each one more satisfying. The grindcore influence is still heavily present, but this is the point that Carcass resemble a death metal band to a greater extent, though a more extreme variety than fans of the genre were used to. I suppose the biggest difference between this and the first album is that the band is actually playing music now.